That, in brief, is the quiet indignity visited upon the earthwork at Corbally in County Clare, where a north-south route bisects a low, sub-circular platform that once formed the physical foundation of Corbally Castle. The platform survives, albeit in two halves, covered in grass and scrub, measuring roughly 21 metres north to south and 16 metres east to west. Its height varies considerably, rising from about 0.4 metres on the western side to 2.3 metres at the north-east, which gives a sense of how the ground was shaped and built up to support whatever structure once stood here.

The earthwork sits at the eastern end of a low hill, a position that would have offered a modest but useful elevation over the surrounding landscape. Such raised platforms are commonly associated with tower houses or earlier fortified structures in this part of Munster, where local lords and lesser gaelic or anglo-norman families built in earth and stone to mark territory and command local routes. The castle itself, recorded separately, is gone, and what remains is essentially its footprint, the shaped ground that once carried walls.